MADRID“We have rampant inflation. Wages have to go up.” The general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, has started the new year with the demand that he already put on the table weeks before the Christmas campaign. This Tuesday, the union leader once once more demanded that in the face of rising inflation – the advanced year-on-year CPI for December stood at 6.7% – and, in order not to lose purchasing power, workers see their wages increase much more. The visible face of the other big union (CCOO), Unai Sordo, has expressed the same direction: “Spain cannot afford to lose purchasing power”.
The two unions have called on employers to negotiate a new Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC), the frame of reference for the negotiation of agreements between companies and workers, expired in 2020. In 2018 , when the agreement was renewed, and until 2020, the AENC collected a salary increase of 2%, as well as an additional voluntary point linked to productivity, absenteeism and business results.
But what figure should this increase translate into now? Both the UGT and CCOO have avoided specifying a percentage, although they reject an average increase in wages agreed through collective agreements such as that of December 2021, which stands at 1.47% (in fact, it is the lowest increase in the last four years and represents a sharp loss of purchasing power compared to current inflation), according to the Ministry of Labor’s collective bargaining statistics. However, unions are also looking at the year-on-year rate of 6.7% price increases. According to most supervisors, this is a “persistent” but “transient” increase in inflation, mainly due to the volatility of energy prices. For this reason, bodies such as the Bank of Spain and the Spanish government itself have called for it not to be transferred to wages, in order to avoid “second-round effects”, that is, an inflationary spiral.
The other data on the table is the average CPI rate for the whole of 2021, which, unlike the year-on-year rate, stands at 3.1%. Unlike the year-on-year rate for December (the CPI data is compared to the same month in 2020, when inflation was negative), the average rate of inflation takes into account what happened each month in 2021. For example, in January last year the CPI was 0.5%. However, the average increase in wages recorded is still above the last.
“The renewal of the agreements can become a focus of social conflict, as has happened in Cádiz,” warn the unions. That is why they are asking for biannual or three-year salary agreements (on average, the duration of an agreement is 3.2 years) and the possibility of recovering the salary guarantee clauses, which over the years have disappeared (at the moment, only 17% of the agreements contain them). These clauses made it possible to revise the salary in the event of a high rise in inflation, without having to be explicitly indexed. However, the employer rejects them. Employers argue that the fact that they do not exist also allows wages to be maintained in the event of negative inflation, as was the case in 2020.
Added to all this is the increase in the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI), which the unions demand is 1,000 euros a month in 14 payments (now stands at 965 euros per month). “It has to be immediate and retroactive,” Alvarez said. In fact, the UGT has requested that the negotiating table with the government and social agents be convened. Social workers fear that the executive will prolong the negotiation, as happened in 2021 when the SMI ended up increasing in September, although they have recalled that this increase was “the commitment” that assumed at that time the government.
Pending labor reform
On the processing of labor reform, both the UGT and CCOO have asked the various political forces, especially the investiture partners, to validate the tripartite agreement and, in any case, leave for later other “legitimate” claims. . “It’s a very good deal and that doesn’t stop the groups from making changes during the second half of the legislature,” Sordo said. However, the leader of the UGT has acknowledged the possibility of introducing amendments and, therefore, of modifying the text, although he has asked that it be done taking into account the social agents.
One of these changes might be the introduction of the prevalence of the regional agreement over the state, condition sine qua non for parties like the GNP. The Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, referred to the issue this Wednesday: “[Els partits] They have to play their part; I’m talking and I’m not harassing anyone, “said Diaz, who cooled the possibility of reaching an agreement thanks to the support of Citizens.
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